Meaningful Play and Malicious Delight: Exploring Maldaimonic Game UX
Pages 174 - 180
Abstract
Maldaimonia is a new experiential concept that refers to self-actualization and self-expression through egocentric, destructive, and/or exploitative activities. Still, it is unclear whether maldaimonia is an actual facet of real experience. As a subversive orientation, it may be rare or socially challenging to discuss openly. However, video games provide a space in which people can be expressive in different ways without the same repercussions as in real life. Indeed, game spaces may be one of the few contexts in which to study maldaimonic experiences. In this study, we examined whether and how maldaimonia exists as a feature of game user experiences by analyzing critical self-reports of gaming activities, confirming its existence. We contribute this new construct to work on "dark play" in games research.
References
[1]
Vero Vanden Abeele, Katta Spiel, Lennart Nacke, Daniel Johnson, and Kathrin Gerling. 2020. Development and validation of the player experience inventory: A scale to measure player experiences at the level of functional and psychosocial consequences. International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 135 (March 2020), 102370. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhcs.2019.102370
[2]
Craig A Anderson. 2004. An update on the effects of playing violent video games. Journal of Adolescence 27, 1 (Feb. 2004), 113–122. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2003.10.009
[3]
Stephen P. Anderson. 2011. Seductive interaction design: Creating playful, fun, and effective user experiences. New Riders, Berkeley, CA.
[4]
Anne Bartsch and Mary Beth Oliver. 2017. Appreciation of meaningful entertainment experiences and eudaimonic well-being. In The Routledge handbook of media use and well-being: International perspectives on theory and research on positive media effects. Routledge/Taylor & Francis Group, New York, NY, US, 80–92.
[5]
Virginia Braun and Victoria Clarke. 2006. Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology 3, 2 (Jan. 2006), 77–101. https://doi.org/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa Publisher: Routledge _eprint: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1191/1478088706qp063oa.
[6]
Tom Cole and Marco Gillies. 2021. Thinking and doing: Challenge, agency, and the eudaimonic experience in video games. Games and Culture 16, 2 (March 2021), 187–207. https://doi.org/10.1177/1555412019881536 Publisher: SAGE Publications.
[7]
Mia Consalvo. 2009. Cheating: Gaining Advantage in Videogames. MIT Press. Google-Books-ID: XbcNAUxUajAC.
[8]
Christine Cook, Juliette Schaafsma, and Marjolijn Antheunis. 2018. Under the bridge: An in-depth examination of online trolling in the gaming context. New Media & Society 20, 9 (Sept. 2018), 3323–3340. https://doi.org/10.1177/1461444817748578 Publisher: SAGE Publications.
[9]
Rowan Daneels, Nicholas D. Bowman, Daniel Possler, and Elisa D. Mekler. 2021. The ’eudaimonic experience’: A scoping review of the concept in digital games research. Media and Communication 9, 2 (May 2021), 178–190. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v9i2.3824 Number: 2.
[10]
Yvonne AW De Kort, Wijnand A. IJsselsteijn, and Karolien Poels. 2007. Digital games as social presence technology: Development of the Social Presence in Gaming Questionnaire (SPGQ). In Proceedings of the 10th Annual International Workshop on Presence. Barcelona, Spain, 195–203.
[11]
Edward L. Deci and Richard M. Ryan. 2008. Hedonia, eudaimonia, and well-being: An introduction. Journal of Happiness Studies 9, 1 (Jan. 2008), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-006-9018-1
[12]
Sebastian Deterding. 2014. Eudaimonic design, or: Six invitations to rethink gamification. SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 2466374. Social Science Research Network, Rochester, NY. https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2466374
[13]
Sarah Diefenbach, Nina Kolb, and Marc Hassenzahl. 2014. The ’hedonic’ in human-computer interaction: History, contributions, and future research directions. In Proceedings of the 2014 conference on Designing interactive systems. ACM, Vancouver, BC, 305–314. https://doi.org/10.1145/2598510.2598549
[14]
Christopher John Ferguson. 2007. The good, the bad and the ugly: A meta-analytic review of positive and negative effects of violent video games. Psychiatric Quarterly 78, 4 (Dec. 2007), 309–316. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-007-9056-9
[15]
Jodi Forlizzi and Katja Battarbee. 2004. Understanding experience in interactive systems. In Proceedings of the 5th conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques(DIS ’04). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 261–268. https://doi.org/10.1145/1013115.1013152
[16]
Ken Gemes. 2009. Freud and Nietzsche on sublimation. The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 38, 1 (Oct. 2009), 38–59. https://doi.org/10.2307/20717974 Publisher: Duke University Press.
[17]
Matthew Grizzard, Ron Tamborini, Robert J. Lewis, Lu Wang, and Sujay Prabhu. 2014. Being bad in a video game can make us morally sensitive. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 17, 8 (Aug. 2014), 499–504. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2013.0658 Publisher: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.
[18]
David Gundry and Sebastian Deterding. 2018. Intrinsic elicitation: A model and design approach for games collecting human subject data. In Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on the Foundations of Digital Games(FDG ’18). ACM, New York, NY, 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1145/3235765.3235803
[19]
David Gundry and Sebastian Deterding. 2019. Validity threats in quantitative data collection with games: A narrative survey. Simulation & Gaming 50, 3 (June 2019), 302–328. https://doi.org/10.1177/1046878118805515 Publisher: SAGE Publications Inc.
[20]
Jonathan Gutman. 1982. A means-end chain model based on consumer categorization processes. Journal of Marketing 46, 2 (April 1982), 60–72. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224298204600207 Publisher: SAGE Publications Inc.
[21]
Peter A. Hancock, Aaron A. Pepe, and Lauren L. Murphy. 2005. Hedonomics: The power of positive and pleasurable ergonomics. Ergonomics in Design 13, 1 (2005), 8–14.
[22]
Marc Hassenzahl. 2001. The effect of perceived hedonic quality on product appealingness. International Journal of Human–Computer Interaction 13, 4 (Dec. 2001), 481–499. https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327590IJHC1304_07 Publisher: Taylor & Francis _eprint: https://doi.org/10.1207/S15327590IJHC1304_07.
[23]
Marc Hassenzahl. 2008. User experience (UX): Towards an experiential perspective on product quality. In Proceedings of the 20th International Conference of the Association Francophone d’Interaction Homme-Machine. ACM, Metz, France, 11–15.
[24]
Marc Hassenzahl. 2010. Experience design: Technology for all the right reasons. Synthesis Lectures on Human-Centered Informatics 3, 1 (Jan. 2010), 1–95. https://doi.org/10.2200/S00261ED1V01Y201003HCI008
[25]
Marc Hassenzahl and Noam Tractinsky. 2006. User experience – a research agenda. Behaviour & Information Technology 25, 2 (2006), 91–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/01449290500330331
[26]
Daniel M. Haybron. 2016. The philosophical basis of eudaimonic psychology. In Handbook of Eudaimonic Well-Being, Joar Vittersø (Ed.). Springer International Publishing, Cham, 27–53. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-42445-3_2
[27]
Martin G. Helander. 2002. Hedonomics—affective human factors design. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 46th Annual Meeting, Vol. 46. SAGE, Baltimore, MD, 978–982. https://doi.org/10.1177/154193120204601209
[28]
Robin Hunicke, Marc LeBlanc, and Robert Zubek. 2004. MDA: A formal approach to game design and game research. In Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Challenges in Game AI, Vol. 4. San Jose, CA, 1722. https://www.aaai.org/Papers/Workshops/2004/WS-04-04/WS04-04-001.pdf Issue: 1.
[29]
Veronika Huta. 2013. Pursuing eudaimonia versus hedonia: Distinctions, similarities, and relationships. In The best within us: Positive psychology perspectives on eudaimonia. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, US, 139–158.
[30]
Veronika Huta and Richard M. Ryan. 2010. Pursuing pleasure or virtue: The differential and overlapping well-being benefits of hedonic and eudaimonic motives. Journal of Happiness Studies 11, 6 (Dec. 2010), 735–762. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-009-9171-4
[31]
Veronika Huta and Alan S. Waterman. 2013. Eudaimonia and its distinction from hedonia: Developing a classification and terminology for understanding conceptual and operational definitions. Journal of Happiness Studies 15, 6 (Dec. 2013), 1425–1456. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10902-013-9485-0
[32]
Kristine Jorgensen and Faltin Karlsen. 2019. Transgression in Games and Play. MIT Press. Google-Books-ID: k8GDDwAAQBAJ.
[33]
Jesper Juul. 2011. Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. MIT Press. Google-Books-ID: pyo3AgAAQBAJ.
[34]
Jinhyung Kim, Pyungwon Kang, and Incheol Choi. 2014. Pleasure now, meaning later: Temporal dynamics between pleasure and meaning. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 55 (Nov. 2014), 262–270. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2014.07.018
[35]
Wei Jie Dominic Koek, Valerie Yu, and Vivian Hsueh Hua Chen. 2022. Meaningful gameplay design and the effect on eudaimonic and hedonic gaming experience. In Proceedings of the 55th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. HCISS, Hawaii, 1624–1633. https://doi.org/10.24251/HICSS.2022.201 Accepted: 2021-12-24T17:31:33Z.
[36]
Hannu Korhonen, Markus Montola, and Juha Arrasvuori. 2009. Understanding playful user experience through digital games. In Proceedings of the 2009 International Conference on Designing Pleasurable Products and Interfaces. Compiegne, France, 274–285.
[37]
Rachel Kowert. 2020. Dark participation in games. Frontiers in Psychology 11 (2020). https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.598947
[38]
Rachel Kowert and Chrissy Cook. 2022. The toxicity of our (virtual) cities: Prevalence of dark participation in games and perceived effectiveness of reporting tools. In Proceedings of the 55th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences. HICSS, Hawaii, 3180–3189. https://hdl.handle.net/10125/79724
[39]
Ivar Krumpal. 2013. Determinants of social desirability bias in sensitive surveys: A literature review. Quality & Quantity 47, 4 (June 2013), 2025–2047. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11135-011-9640-9
[40]
Anna Sophie Kümpel and Julian Unkel. 2017. The effects of digital games on hedonic, eudaimonic and telic entertainment experiences. Journal of Gaming & Virtual Worlds 9, 1 (March 2017), 21–37. https://doi.org/10.1386/jgvw.9.1.21_1
[41]
Topias Mattinen and Joseph Macey. 2018. Online abuse and age in Dota 2. In Proceedings of the 22nd International Academic Mindtrek Conference(Mindtrek ’18). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 69–78. https://doi.org/10.1145/3275116.3275149
[42]
Elisa D. Mekler and Kasper Hornbæk. 2016. Momentary pleasure or lasting meaning? Distinguishing eudaimonic and hedonic user experiences. In Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems(CHI ’16). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 4509–4520. https://doi.org/10.1145/2858036.2858225
[43]
Jim Millham and Richard W Kellogg. 1980. Need for social approval: Impression management or self-deception?Journal of Research in Personality 14, 4 (Dec. 1980), 445–457. https://doi.org/10.1016/0092-6566(80)90003-3
[44]
Torill Mortensen and Kristine Jørgensen. 2020. The Paradox of Transgression in Games. Routledge, London. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780367816476
[45]
Torill Elvira Mortensen, Jonas Linderoth, and Ashley ML Brown. 2015. The Dark Side of Game Play: Controversial Issues in Playful Environments. Routledge. Google-Books-ID: rlDLCQAAQBAJ.
[46]
Livia J. Müller, Elisa D. Mekler, and Klaus Opwis. 2015. Facets in HCI: Towards understanding eudaimonic UX – preliminary findings. In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems(CHI EA ’15). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 2283–2288. https://doi.org/10.1145/2702613.2732836
[47]
Lewis Nitschinsk, Stephanie J. Tobin, and Eric J. Vanman. 2022. The disinhibiting effects of anonymity increase online trolling. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking 25, 6 (June 2022), 377–383. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2022.0005 Publisher: Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers.
[48]
Mary Beth Oliver and Arthur A. Raney. 2011. Entertainment as pleasurable and meaningful: Identifying hedonic and eudaimonic motivations for entertainment consumption. Journal of Communication 61, 5 (Oct. 2011), 984–1004. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2011.01585.x
[49]
Timo Partala and Aleksi Kallinen. 2012. Understanding the most satisfying and unsatisfying user experiences: Emotions, psychological needs, and context. Interacting with Computers 24, 1 (Jan. 2012), 25–34. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intcom.2011.10.001
[50]
Cale J. Passmore, Mathew K. Miller, Jun Liu, Cody J. Phillips, and Regan L. Mandryk. 2020. A cheating mood: The emotional and psychological benefits of cheating in single-player games. In Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play(CHI PLAY ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 58–70. https://doi.org/10.1145/3410404.3414252
[51]
Daniel Pimentel and Sri Kalyanaraman. 2020. Your own worst enemy: Implications of the customization, and destruction, of non-player characters. In Proceedings of the Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play(CHI PLAY ’20). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, 93–106. https://doi.org/10.1145/3410404.3414269
[52]
Kevin Proudfoot. 2023. Inductive/deductive hybrid thematic analysis in mixed methods research. Journal of Mixed Methods Research 17, 3 (July 2023), 308–326. https://doi.org/10.1177/15586898221126816 Publisher: SAGE Publications.
[53]
Eshkol Rafaeli, Gregory M. Rogers, and William Revelle. 2007. Affective synchrony: Individual differences in mixed emotions. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 33, 7 (July 2007), 915–932. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167207301009 Publisher: SAGE Publications Inc.
[54]
R.M. Ryan and E.L. Deci. 2000. Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic Definitions and New Directions. Contemporary Educational Psychology 25, 1 (2000), 54–67. https://doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1999.1020
[55]
Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman. 2004. Rules of Play. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
[56]
Katie Seaborn. 2016. Evaluating hedonic and eudaimonic motives in human-computer interaction. In Proceedings of the 18th International Conference, HCI International 2016(Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 9735). Springer, Toronto, ON, 494–500. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-40397-7_47
[57]
Katie Seaborn, Peter Pennefather, and Deborah I. Fels. 2020. Eudaimonia and hedonia in the design and evaluation of a cooperative game for psychosocial well-being. Human–Computer Interaction 35, 4 (2020), 289–337. https://doi.org/10.1080/07370024.2018.1555481 Publisher: Taylor & Francis.
[58]
Brian Sutton-Smith. 2001. The Ambiguity of Play (revised ed. edition ed.). Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.
[59]
Ron Tamborini, Nicholas David Bowman, Allison Eden, Matthew Grizzard, and Ashley Organ. 2010. Defining media enjoyment as the satisfaction of intrinsic needs. Journal of Communication 60, 4 (Dec. 2010), 758–777. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2010.01513.x
[60]
Wai Yen Tang and Jesse Fox. 2016. Men’s harassment behavior in online video games: Personality traits and game factors. Aggressive Behavior 42, 6 (2016), 513–521. https://doi.org/10.1002/ab.21646 _eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/ab.21646.
[61]
Weisha Wang and Haiming Hang. 2021. Exploring the eudaimonic game experience through purchasing functional and nonfunctional items in MMORPGs. Psychology & Marketing 38, 10 (2021), 1847–1862. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21503 _eprint: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1002/mar.21503.
[62]
Alan S. Waterman. 1990. Personal expressiveness: Philosophical and psychological foundations. Journal of Mind and Behavior 11, 1 (1990), 47–74.
[63]
Alan S. Waterman. 1993. Two conceptions of happiness: Contrasts of personal expressiveness (eudaimonia) and hedonic enjoyment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 64, 4 (1993), 678–691. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.64.4.678
[64]
Alan S. Waterman. 2008. Reconsidering happiness: A eudaimonist’s perspective. The Journal of Positive Psychology 3, 4 (2008), 234–252.
[65]
Alan S. Waterman. 2021. Toward a theory of maldaimonia. Journal of Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology (Dec. 2021). https://doi.org/10.1037/teo0000198
[66]
Werner Wirth, Matthias Hofer, and Holger Schramm. 2012. Beyond pleasure: Exploring the eudaimonic entertainment experience. Human Communication Research 38, 4 (Oct. 2012), 406–428. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2012.01434.x
[67]
Lorette K. Woolsey. 1986. The critical incident technique: An innovative qualitative method of research. Canadian Journal of Counselling and Psychotherapy 20, 4 (1986). https://cjc-rcc.ucalgary.ca/article/view/59733 Number: 4.
[68]
Peter Wright, John McCarthy, and Lisa Meekison. 2004. Making sense of experience. In Funology: From Usability to Enjoyment, Mark A. Blythe, Kees Overbeeke, Andrew F. Monk, and Peter C. Wright (Eds.). Springer Netherlands, Dordrecht, 43–53. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-2967-5_5
Index Terms
- Meaningful Play and Malicious Delight: Exploring Maldaimonic Game UX
Recommendations
Play Across Boundaries: Exploring Cross-Cultural Maldaimonic Game Experiences
CHI '24: Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing SystemsMaldaimonic game experiences occur when people engage in personally fulfilling play through egocentric, destructive, and/or exploitative acts. Initial qualitative work verified this orientation and experiential construct for English-speaking Westerners. ...
Exploring sociality and engagement in play through game-control distribution
Special Issue: The multiple faces of Social Intelligence DesignThis study explores how distributing the controls of a video game among multiple players affects the sociality and engagement experienced in game play. A video game was developed in which the distribution of game controls among the players could be ...
Automated Evaluation of Game Experience based on Game Dynamics and Motives for Play
CHI PLAY '22: Extended Abstracts of the 2022 Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in PlayThis paper describes an automated evaluation of the overall game experience using a synthetic agent, that we contextualize for First-Person Shooter games. This evaluation method is based on the characterization of the game experience through dynamics ...
Comments
Information & Contributors
Information
Published In
October 2023
370 pages
ISBN:9798400700293
DOI:10.1145/3573382
Copyright © 2023 ACM.
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].
Sponsors
Publisher
Association for Computing Machinery
New York, NY, United States
Publication History
Published: 06 October 2023
Check for updates
Author Tags
Qualifiers
- Research-article
- Research
- Refereed limited
Conference
CHI PLAY '23
Sponsor:
CHI PLAY '23: The Annual Symposium on Computer-Human Interaction in Play
October 10 - 13, 2023
ON, Stratford, Canada
Acceptance Rates
Overall Acceptance Rate 421 of 1,386 submissions, 30%
Upcoming Conference
CHI PLAY '24
- Sponsor:
- sigchi
Contributors
Other Metrics
Bibliometrics & Citations
Bibliometrics
Article Metrics
- 0Total Citations
- 105Total Downloads
- Downloads (Last 12 months)105
- Downloads (Last 6 weeks)5
Reflects downloads up to 26 Jul 2024
Other Metrics
Citations
Cited By
View allView Options
Get Access
Login options
Check if you have access through your login credentials or your institution to get full access on this article.
Sign inFull Access
View options
View or Download as a PDF file.
PDFeReader
View online with eReader.
eReaderHTML Format
View this article in HTML Format.
HTML Format